Once Upon A Time
by shimmeryshine
Summary: Her holiday starts with a crime.


Her Christmas holiday starts with a crime, as is fitting with the rest of her life, she thinks glumly as her eyes narrow into slits in the dim light of her apartment. There is a suspiciously cheery looking present, wrapped in sparkling red and gold paper with a giant green bow on top sitting in the middle of her kitchen table, screaming out her partner's name in the tune of any of the dozens of Christmas songs he's been blasting in her ear all week. She doesn't even move to open the garish gift, instead choosing to drop her belongings to the floor and pull her phone out of her pocket, dialing his number without even looking.

He picks up after barely one ring.

"How did you get into my apartment?" she asks without preamble, hand on a hip, staring at the square shaped evidence of his crime.

"Did you open it?"

"How. Did. You. Get. In. Here?"

"Don't ask me to reveal the magic of Christmas!"

She pokes the gift with one finger, testing its weight. Whatever it is he smuggled in, it's fairly heavy. "You do know that I arrest people for this kind of 'magic' every day, right Castle?"

His voice drops on the other end of the line, and she instinctively leans forward as if to move closer to his mouth to hear. He's miles away, but his body language is so etched into her psyche that it's become an involuntary response. "I'll let you cuff me later," he drawls, voice flirting with an innuendo, but then shifts up to a timbre of steady earnestness. "Open it."

Beckett bites her lip and pushes her hair behind her ear before she finally reaches for the package, dragging it across the table loudly enough for him to hear it through the phone.

"Put me on speakerphone," he says, interrupting her reluctant acquiescence.

"What?"

"So I get the full experience! I'm imagining you ripping into it with both hands." He's _imagining her_, she swallows that one down. Sometimes she wonders exactly how much time he spends daydreaming about her or her alter ego. She wonders where exactly the line between them is drawn in his head.

Her phone thunks to the tabletop as she thumbs the speakerphone button, hands now free to open his gift at will.

"This better not be something over the top, Castle." She knows he is aware of how she feels about his money situation, completely uncomfortable with him buying her anything more substantial than coffee, but he's not always the best at respecting boundaries when it comes to gift giving.

She hears him huff on the other side of the line, loud in her quiet kitchen. "I didn't even spend any money on it, if that's what you're asking. It's Christmas, Beckett, just open your present."

Her index finger finds a gap in the paper, on the side where he has folded a little triangle and affixed it with tape. On closer inspection it seems like he's wrapped it himself, and coupled with the knowledge that this is not something he purchased with money, it makes the moment feel somehow more intimate. She's alone in her kitchen, but he's breathing on the other line, imagining her opening this gift he's broken into her apartment to give her, and she cannot even begin to imagine what it could be.

"Stop trying to figure out what it is and open it already," Castle huffs impatiently into the phone, interrupting her distracted exploration of the corners of his wrapping job. He knows her entirely too well, she decides. She uses two hands to tear at the paper, indulging him even though he can't even see her, and stops when the leather cover of some kind of notebook becomes visible. The surface is unmarked, smooth brown leather bound with a cream colored elastic on the side, holding the cover to its contents. Even without opening it completely, Beckett can see that the pages are swollen with use, filled to the brim and repeatedly opened and closed. Her brow furrows as she slides her right hand into the paper, smoothing back the edges to pull the notebook completely free.

She can hear Castle breathing on the other end of the phone, waiting for her. She stares at the screen of it for a moment, studying it as if it were him, before running a flat palm against the leather bound book in her grasp.

"Castle, what…" she trails off, scared to turn the cover.

"Keep going." His voice sends warm tendrils down her fingers and into her chest, affection bubbling because she thinks she knows exactly what she's holding onto, exactly what he's given her.

She slides her finger under the length of elastic holding the book closed, finally slipping it over the edge, allowing the pages to puff up to their true height. Holding her breath, Beckett flips to the first cream colored page, and comes face to face with the neat scrawl of Castle's handwriting.

A lump rises in her throat at the sight of it, the familiar title staring back at her with a kind of inevitability that is staggering. This is the one, the first one she read, the one she stood in line for an hour and a half at a Barnes & Noble on her one day off to get signed by the man she had only ever glimpsed on the dust jacket on the back of his novels. The one that she always went back to when things got too hard, when she needed to forget.

"_How did you know_?" she whispers to him, finger skimming lightly over the indentation left by the press of his pen all those years ago, completely engrossed. It's the original manuscript, she's pretty sure.

When he says only _magic_, his voice sounds heavy, stuck in his throat even though he can't possibly know how much he's just floored her with a single gesture. Except she is certain that he _does_ know, and that's why he's given this to her, why he's let her open it with only a phone call connecting them, because he _knows_ things about her and sometimes he's content to just possess that knowledge instead of watching it happen in front of his eyes.

"How are you imagining me right now?" she asks absently as she turns the first page, before she's even realized what she's said. One of her stools is only a foot away, so she takes the opportunity to slide into it with her book, pulling her phone closer to her as she does so, keeping him as near as she can with all the distance between them.

She hears him suck in a breath at her question, getting serious. He is always serious when spinning a tale, and the most serious when they are about _her_.

"Are you sitting now?" he asks, and she nods to herself before she realizes he's not in the room with her.

"Mmmhmm."

"In my head," he begins, sounding so very much like he's starting a story he's told hundreds of times before. Sounding as familiar as _once upon a time_. "I'm imagining you perched on the chair in your kitchen, the book spread open in your palms as you lean into it. Your eyes are scanning the pages, looking at the words you've memorized, sticking on some of the ones you've never seen, the ones that didn't make the final cut."

He pauses for a moment, letting his words wash over her as she does exactly what he is describing. She can't help but respond to him though, he's being awfully sure of himself. "Memorized?" she says, voice lilting in a way that implies he's misjudged her interest in his books.

"Don't ruin my story," he replies, preserving his ego and her secrets with a deft turn of phrase.

"What am I doing now?" she asks as she flips her way through the pages, turning the book on it's side to read some of his notes in the margins.

"Now? Hm," he pauses as if he's chewing on his words, trying to pluck the right scene from his mind and give it to her. "Now you're flipping through, trying to find that _scene_, you know the one, on the beach? The one with the rum and the bathing suits and…"

"What!" she barks suddenly, slamming the book closed with her palm. "I was not looking for that scene, Castle." She's blushing a little bit in the dimness of the room, fingers itching to do exactly as he has implied. Flickers of him scribbling out elaborate sex scenes in the notebook she's holding suddenly fill her head, making her feel hot all over.

She wonders what his Heat Wave manuscript looks like…

"No need to get defensive, everyone knows those are the best parts." She can hear him smirking over the line.

She grabs for her phone with her now free hand, leaving the closed manuscript on the tabletop as she presses him back to her ear, wanting him closer. "Castle – " she starts, but then he cuts her off with a muffled grunt.

"Sorry!" he says quickly, sounding suddenly distracted. "Alexis is finally home and we have to make cookies to leave for Santa!" He sounds so excited she can't help but shake her head at him and smile. "Merry Christmas Beckett," he says softly, focused only on her again.

"Merry Christmas Castle."

As her phone disconnects and the display goes dark, she feels the sudden emptiness of her kitchen envelop her. The fullness of his presence in her life, even if only over the phone, becomes glaringly clear as she pushes her chair back from the edge of the table with a screech of metal that bounces around her deserted apartment. There isn't even a Christmas tree to absorb the sound.

She's tired, it was a surprisingly long day at the precinct for Christmas Eve, but the manuscript Castle has given her is far, far too tempting to resist, so she finally flips on the light and turns on her coffee pot. She has Christmas day off, and zero plans, so there is absolutely no reason why she can't enjoy a cup of coffee and a little reading late into the night and sleep away as many hours of Christmas as she possibly can. As the heavy aroma starts to permeate her space, Beckett moves to the fridge to take out the milk, stopping in her tracks when she sees what is sitting on the shelf next to it. Someone has placed a bright red and white bottle of peppermint coffee creamer on her shelf, smiling out at her with a waving little elf sticker on its front. She reaches for it without hesitating, turning the container over in her hands, a smile pulling at the corners of her lips. She doesn't even particularly _like_ coffee creamer, but it _is_ Christmas, and if she's not allowed to be sappy and sentimental on this day of all days, she's not sure when she ever would be. So she takes the candy cane striped creamer over to her pot, stirring a generous amount of it into her mug and taking a deep, inhaling breath. It smells like Christmas and reminds her of _him_, and it's not even the coffee that warms her as she takes her first scalding sip and slides the manuscript off the counter and into her arms, cradling it as she makes her way back to her bedroom.

.

It's 3am when she shows up at his door, manuscript hugged to her chest like a child. She's in a grey sweatshirt, yoga pants, and an unbuttoned black pea coat with her hair shoved messily under a maroon colored hat as he opens the door, bleary eyed and regarding her with a curious tilt of his head.

"Beckett?" he asks, voice full of gravel.

Before he can ask her if everything is okay, she suddenly shoves the manuscript from her own grip to his chest like she needs to get it away from her. Like she needs to hurry up and spit out the extremely flimsy excuse she's prepared for showing up on his doorstep at 3am on Christmas morning before he misconstrues her intentions. Or ferrets them out, she's not quite sure which.

"I can't take this," she says in a rush as she steps past him into his entryway, staying close to the door, though firmly _inside_. He shuts it softly after her, throwing them into the darkness of his living room, the only light coming from the twinkling Christmas tree in the corner.

"Uh," he says, raking a hand through his hair to try and wake up enough to have a coherent conversation with a pajama clad Kate Beckett. "Why not?"

"You can't just give away your manuscripts, Castle," she says as if it's the most obvious thing in the world.

"I…think I just did?" he's confused as to why she's really here, she can see it all over his face. This wasn't a problem until it became an _excuse_ for her to come over unannounced. On Christmas. Oh boy.

Her eyes flit to the book cradled loosely against his chest, and then back to his face for a moment, finally settling on the less dangerous Christmas tree in the corner. She pulls the hat from her head with an absent tug, setting her wild hair tumbling down her back and across her eyes. She can feel him watching her as she takes a breath and speaks. "Why did you give that to me?"

Everything feels weighty at three o'clock in the morning, and the way his fingers curl around her bicep to turn her in his direction make her feel _marked_. He doesn't usually touch her like this, but something has shifted and this is not a moment that exists in their pattern. She decides to look him right in the eye instead of pulling away, an offering to the moment. It feels right with him anchored to her arm as he is.

"I saw the book on your shelf," he finally admits softly. "The binding was coming apart from being read so often, an odd sock on your shelf of immaculately kept volumes."

She nods, understanding. "You opened it?"

To his credit he looks a bit guilty for snooping around her bookshelf. "Yes."

She digests this information, that he's known about _this_ book for who knows how long and has never said a word. Knows he signed it, knows how worn it was, that there are pages with tear tracks blurring the print, pages that are torn and taped together from those times when her frustration had no other outlet but the weight of the book in her hands. Everything.

"What about your Christmas magic?" she breathes, eyes glinting just enough to let him know that it's _okay_.

"This is what happens when you try to figure out Christmas," he tuts, voice soft but playfully reproachful. He wordlessly passes the book back to her and she takes it, tucking it into her side. "Maybe now you'll learn your lesson."

She rolls her eyes. "You mean that 'Christmas magic' means snooping around my things and breaking into my apartment?"

Now it's his turn to roll his eyes. She thinks he must have learned that from her.

The knit of her hat scratches at her fingers as she shoves it into the pocket of her coat, looking at him from under her lashes as her hand brushes the other item she's brought with her on this impromptu trip. "Are you sure you're okay giving me this?" she asks, one last time, to be certain.

"Are you sure you want it?" The question hangs in the air between them, unexpectedly heavy in the early morning, making her think of all the times he's offered himself up to her and she's said _not yet_. Her saliva is thick in her throat as she swallows, squaring his gaze.

"Yes," she whispers haltingly, and then steadier. "Yes, I'm sure." He gives her another of his lopsided looks, studying her in that way he does, eyes soft but she can tell he's being cautious.

"I brought you something," she says before he can comment further. Her fingers close around the small box in her pocket as she watches his face bloom into a smile. She feels herself smiling back, leaning into his space without meaning to, drawn to the warmth radiating from his entire body. His fingers brush hers lightly as she hands the box over, making her shiver despite her layers. He licks his lips and then shakes the box, trying to figure out what it is before he opens it, not unlike she had done some hours before. "It's kind of…lame compared to this," she gestures to the book in her arms and shrugs, but the way he's looking at her is saying it could be a lump of coal for all he cares, as long as she's given it to him.

The lid of the box falls to the floor with a soft thud as he tears into the tissue lining with the vigor she is sure he was imagining her having over the phone. When he reaches the small object inside, he stops, picking it up and holding it in the direction of the diffused light from the tree. She can tell when he figures out what it is, feels the glee coming off him in waves. He turns suddenly toward her shoving the small badge in her face, a perfect copy of hers except for the inscriptions she had etched on its face. "Stop!" he says, voice mimicking every cop movie he's ever seen. "Richard Castle, Writer of Crime, 12th Precinct."

She laughs in his face as he tries it out two more times, once with "freeze!" and then with "put your hands up!"

"This looks illegally authentic," he says, short of breath from excitement. "Where did you even get this?"

Her eyes follow his fingertips as he turns the badge over in his hands a few times then lifts up the edge of his shirt to clip it to his sweatpants. His hipbone peeks out from underneath the elastic, drawing her gaze as she watches him put it on, distracting her with thoughts of _skin_ and _Castle_. He's fumbling though, sleepy fingers getting stuck on the too thick waist of his pants, so she swats his hand away, showing him the trick to making the clasp open wider, sliding it into place and then smoothing her fingers away, skirting across the jut of his bones without thinking. She feels his abdominals tense as her fingers make contact, jolting her eyes back up to his face when he lets his shirt fall once again, but he's caught her staring. Without her permission, a blush flares across her cheeks at his smirk, knowing in the dimness of the room, all too visible when they are standing this close. She's caught him looking on more occasions than she can count, but it's somehow different this way, when it's _her_. His willingness has never really been the issue.

He mercifully doesn't push though, instead repeating his question. "Did you order this off the black market or something?" His voice is soft but he sounds vaguely impressed.

"Christmas magic," she deflects with a wink and he looks almost proud of her.

Beckett stills as she watches him raise a hand to her head, close enough for him to reach out and touch her anywhere if he dares to. Her breath burns in her chest, caught and held as she waits to see what he will do, glad that he is moving when she cannot, scared of what she wants him to do. He doesn't cup her cheek though, as she half expects he might, doesn't brush a finger across her lower lip, doesn't do anything except sweep the hair out of her eyes and smooth it down the side of her head, stopping to push it behind her ear with a trace of the pad of his thumb along the ridge of her lobe. Her breath expels at the feel of him there, a place he's never touched. She read in a book once that a person's skin cells completely replace themselves every seven years and can't help but think that at least this skin will be _his_ for a while no matter what happens between them. This skin she's draped in has been held at bay for too long, she wants to give it to him, all of it to him. Right now.

The startling blue of his eyes watch her as she vibrates with the impulse to reach out to him. "I love it," he says softly as _I love you_ echoes around in her head, drawing her closer to him. The manuscript in her arms brushes against his chest, marking their proximity, the catalyst to their very first meeting literally pressed between them. Her mind reels with the inevitability of it all.

Her eyes drop to his mouth as he speaks, watching his tongue move behind his lips, drawing her in. She swallows in response, breathing deeply through her nose as she feels the sharp edge of his badge brush her hip through her pants. When did she get this close to him?

Just as she thinks they couldn't possibly get any closer without…_oh_, he uses the hand at her ear to tilt her head backward and suddenly his mouth is slanted over hers and the fingers of her left hand find themselves shoved to the base of his skull as she pulls him into her, kissing him with a strangled gasp of breath that only serves to breathe him farther into her. He groans loudly as her tongue sweeps out at his bottom lip desperately, wanting to taste him more than she's wanted anything in as long as she can remember. He's here and under her fingers and oh god _in her mouth_ and she can barely do anything but _react_ to him.

Her sweatshirt rides up as she raises on her tip toes to sweep her tongue along the ridge of his and into his mouth, making him rumble against her, his badge digging into her bare skin as her hips try to slant closer. Idly she wonders if this is what he will feel when they do this when she is _not_ in her pajamas, will she mark him? Has he marked her? She wants him to as his hand snakes to the small of her back, pulling on her as he licks along the sensitive skin on the roof of her mouth, making her sigh with want. For once he is the sensible one though, and pulls away just enough to disconnect their mouths. They're still sharing a breath as she opens her eyes to find him watching her, eyes twinkling with Christmas lights and something else she can't quite put words to. She wonders if he can taste the peppermint on her tongue.

"Stay," he breathes into her mouth as she sways against him, but as the word travels its way from her ears to her brain, she abruptly falls back to the flats of her feet and takes a step back. The word cuts through her with a surprising amount of weight, and not the kind that makes her want to pretend like none of this has even happened. It makes her want to say _yes_ and she's not even sure when she turned into this person who wants to give him everything he asks of her because she _can_. Before she can reply though, he senses his mistake, must take her small retreat for shutting down because he clarifies with a hasty "I didn't mean…just, it's late, I don't want you crashing your car at 4am on Christmas morning."

She nods at him, shifts her manuscript from her right arm to her left, eyes his Christmas tree and thinks about her dark, empty apartment across town. She really doesn't want to leave.

"We could camp out under the tree," he says suddenly, voice laced with that child like quality she finds herself craving lately. One of her eyebrows rises in that signature way it does, and he gives her a flourishy gesture with his hand toward his completely over the top tree. "Alexis and I used to fall asleep under the tree some nights when she couldn't sleep, it's fun."

She eyes it hesitantly, drawn in by the warm lights, the hand made ornaments sprinkled among the multicolored balls. He's shuffling across the living room before she can even answer him either way, clearing away some of the presents lined neatly around the tree skirt until there is a space just big enough for the two of them. He grabs an armful of blankets from the hall closet, and two pillows as she watches him, slowly making her way further into his cozy apartment until she's at his back, surveying the comfy little nook he's made them.

"Take off your coat," he finally says to her, grinning with shining eyes.

She takes it off without breaking eye contact, draping it over his couch as she falls to her knees on the blankets, accepting his invitation in the way they communicate so often now, without any actual words. He slides down next to her as soon as she does, looking every bit a child on Christmas with the lights bouncing off the golds in his hair and the blues in his eyes. It feels like _magic_.

As they settle side by side, flannel blanket pulled up around both of their chests, Beckett catches him wincing as he tries to turn and look at her. He's still wearing his new badge. "Are you going to sleep with that on?" she asks, more amused than anything. He waggles his eyebrows at her unintentional double entendre, but then only smiles and nods.

"What if we get a case, I have to be ready. Don't you know anything about being a cop?" he's scoffing at her, making her roll her eyes.

"I don't sleep with my badge, Castle," she says as he finally settles, watching her in the light of the tree.

"What else don't you sleep with?"

She glares at him. He grins. All is right in the world.

She realizes that she's still holding onto his manuscript at about the same time he notices. "A little light bedtime reading?" he asks her. She sets the book down beside her, letting her eyes slide shut as she pointedly ignores him. The late hour, warm blankets, and low lighting are finally starting to settle themselves into her brain, making her sleepy. She thinks he's given up, fallen asleep too, when his voice drips into her ear from entirely too close. "It's about three quarters of the way in," he says.

"What?"

"The beach scene."

She slaps him impulsively, pursing her lips as she tries to suppress a grin. "I know." She doesn't open her eyes when she hears him gasp.

"You _know_? I knew you went right to it, Katherine Beckett…"

"Go to sleep Castle, it's almost morning," she interrupts.

"Did you like those parts I had to cut out because they were just too _hot_?" he's playing with her and it's doing the opposite of making her want to only fall asleep next to him.

"Castle."

The noise he makes boarders on a whine as she cuts him off again. Castle is Castle though, never one to give up the last word if he can help it. "If you're good, maybe I'll let you read the ones from Nikki Heat." He rolls over after that, leaving her biting her lip to keep from reaching for him. To kiss him or slap him, she's not sure. "Merry Christmas," he mumbles into his pillow, finally drifting off.

"Merry Christmas," she returns, fingers softly tracing circles along the cover of the book he's given her.

She dreams about beaches and Christmas and _them._


End file.
